Pages

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Every organization has turn-over at some point. As a Google Apps Admin, it’s important to understand best practices for deprovisioning Google Apps user accounts. As easy as it is to click on that delete button hold off and follow the below steps when an employee departs.

If you need to deprovision many users at once and/or prefer to follow a step by step process consider adding FlashPanel from the Google Apps Marketplace

1.Change the user password:

By changing the password immediately, it ensures that company information remains internal. It also allows time for the Admin to get back into the account to transfer any necessary data.

2. Set Out-Of-Office notice:

Go into the user account using the new password and set the out-of-office notice to notify others of personnel change.

3. Determine valuable information: Make a quick list of the information that may need to be transferred. Some examples may include:

Emails

Shared Calendar/Project Calendars

Documents owned by that users

Groups that the user is an Owner of

Sites that the user is an Owner of

4. Add forwarding address OR delegate the email account:

Add Forwarding address:Use this option if you need a current team member to monitor the incoming emails of the old employee. In the old employee’s user account, go to the gear, then select ‘Settings’. Once in Settings, select the ‘Forwarding and POP/IMAP’ tab.

OR

Delegate the email account:Use this option if you need a current team member to access both new and previous emails in the old employee’s account. This would allow the current team member to check the mailbox occasionally and have access to emails and labels. In Settings, go to ‘Accounts and Import’ and locate 'Grant access to your account'. Then select ‘Add another account’.

Note: The delegate of the old employee’s account will NOT be able to:

Change account settings

Use chat

Use Task lists

Use Gmail Labs

Change Themes

Use Offline Gmail

5. Transfer Document Ownership: If you delete a user account WITHOUT transferring document ownership of the documents, the docs will be deleted from the domain. In the Control Panel, go to Settings → Drive and Docs → Tools and set up the document transfer.

6. Share important calendar or project calendars:In the old employee’s calendar, be sure the share important caledars with other individuals so the calendar is not deleted. Grant the highest permission (Make Changes AND Manage Sharing) to an existing employee. Click on calendar name on the left to ‘Share this calendar’

7. Transfer Google Groups: If the old employee is an Owner or Manager of a Google Group, you must reassign that Group to another individual. The group will disappear if the Owner is deleted before it is reassigned.

8. Transfer site ownership: If the departed employee is an owner of a site, you should assign new ownership of the site to another individual. Go to the site, click on Share, enter new person or select someone already listed. Click on drop down menu and select "Is owner"

9. Delete the user!In the ‘Organization & users’ tab, select the check-box next to the user you wish to delete. Then select ‘More actions’ and choose ‘Delete users’. This will delete the selected users. Be sure you have the correct user selected to be deleted.

10. Add the deleted user as a nickname to an existing user account:Use this tip to ensure that when a customer or client emails the old employee, the email won’t go unnoticed. Organization & users→Select username → Select ‘add a nickname’.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

If you’re a Google Apps for Business administrator—or if you know one—you know it’s not just about managing users, services and devices. It’s also about keeping users secure and productive

Now, admins can elect to receive customizable email alerts when certain events of interest occur. By subscribing to alerts, admins can stay informed and, when needed, take prompt corrective action. These alerts are also helpful when multiple admins work together and want to stay informed on these changes.

There are two kind of alerts:

User Alerts: Generated when our systems detect suspicious or unusual login events as well as on user-level administrator actions such as additions, deletions or suspensions. Real-time alerts allow admins to review the changes and take corrective action.

Settings Alerts: These alerts are automatically generated when any change by administrators to applications, device management or service settings is detected.

To see the latest alerts – and to subscribe to emailed alerts – simply login to your Admin console and go to Reports > Alerts and turn on the alerts that you would like to receive.Also for Admin: Get to the Admin console more easily with the new simplified URL (admin.google.com).

Search for what you needA recent update to Google Docs lets you search for actions within the doc. Whether you’re trying to change a font size, insert a comment, get to spell check, or align a paragraph -- it’s nice to have technology that can keep up with your train of thought!

That’s why the search box in Docs lets you take quick actions in just a few keystrokes. Visit the ‘Help’ menu or use Alt / to get to the search box, then search for what you’d like to do -- all without having to click through the menu bar.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

You can use a Google Group as a collaborative inbox to distribute and track responsibility for topics among the group's members. These features are especially useful for customer service teams. For example, you can create a group with the address support@[your domain].com, add your support staff as members, and allow people outside your organization to send messages to the group. Your support staff will receive your customers' messages, and they can do any of the following from the group's Topics view:

Assign responsibility for a topic to a member of the group

Mark a topic as resolved

Edit the tags associated with a topic

Filter topics according to tag, resolution status, or assignee

To set up a new group as a collaborative inbox or add collaborative inbox to an existing group, read more here

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

One of the first labs I enabled was "Unread message Icon". Once enabled you can tell how many unread messages are in your inbox without browsing to your Inbox tab. This lab embeds the number of unread messages you have right into the Gmail icon itself, like this:

To turn it on: From your Inbox, click on the gear, then Settings. Now go to Labs and scroll down to Unread message icon, click enable and Save Changes at the bottom. Next time you have a ton of tabs open, just glance over at your Inbox tab to see if your unread mail count has changed.

Monday, August 12, 2013

If you like using bullet points and/or numbered lists, check out the new dropdown menu on these icons in Documents - Google has added customized lists.

You can change the color, size, and style of individual bullets, or even customize your own -- whatever you prefer!

The next time you put together notes, list priorities, or set your next agenda, click on the dropdown menu next to the number or bullet list icons to choose your list style.

Once you have chosen your custom list you can right click (two finger tap on Chromebooks) for more editing options.

Also added is an updated spell check that lets you check the spelling of your entire document or presentation at once, instead of having to resolve misspellings individually. See it in action now by clicking on “Tools” then select “Spelling.”

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Google Cloud Print connects your printers to the web. Using Google Cloud Print, you can make your home and work printers available to you and anyone you choose, from the applications you use every day. Google Cloud Print works on your phone, tablet, Chromebook, PC, and any other web-connected device you want to print from.

Away from the office, no problem. Just log in and print a document to your office printer. If you have multiple offices, you will be able to print to any office location them from where ever you are.

You can share your printer with anyone you choose, as easily as you might share a Google Docs document. If your team needs to print, you could share a printer with team members so they can print their weekly reports to whatever printer is closest to you. To learn more and get started check out Google Cloud Print

Monday, August 5, 2013

Our past training used to include a section on how to filter and label newsletters so they can be read at your convenience rather than interrupting you as soon as one hit your inbox. As you will see below, the new (default) inbox can take care of this automatically. Like many, the new look bothered/confused me a little. However, once I "taught" my inbox where I wanted new email to go and I edited a couple of filters that were conflicting with the new inbox, I have to say: this is a great update! I find that I am getting through more mail, faster. Perhaps more important, I am focused on higher priority email first.(The following is from Google's Gmail Blog Posted by Itamar Gilad, Product Manager)We get a lot of different types of email: messages from friends, social notifications, deals and offers, confirmations and receipts, and more. All of these emails can compete for our attention and make it harder to focus on the things we need to get done. Sometimes it feels like our inboxes are controlling us, rather than the other way around.But it doesn't have to be that way. Today, Gmail is getting a brand new inbox on desktop and mobile that puts you back in control using simple, easy organization.

On the desktop, the new inbox groups your mail into categories which appear as different tabs. You simply choose which categories you want and voilà! Your inbox is organized in a way that lets you see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when.

You can easily customize the new inbox - select the tabs you want from all five to none, drag-and-drop to move messages between tabs, set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they also appear in the Primary tab.

If the new inbox isn't quite your style, you can simply switch off all optional tabs to go back to classic view, or switch to any of your other favorite inbox types.

The new inbox is rolling out gradually. The desktop, Android and iOS versions will become available within the next few weeks. If you'd like to try out the new inbox on Desktop sooner, keep an eye on the gear menu and select Configure inbox when it appears in the Settings options.

Friday, August 2, 2013

Google Remote Desktop used to be just a Chrome store app. Now it is built right into Hangouts. With Remote Desktop you can troubleshoot a coworkers computer, have several people give a presentation from the same computer (even when located in different places), and for Chromebook users who thought they lost this functionality, well, it's back.

Remote Desktop is now an app within Hangouts. You will have to add the app before using it. After inviting someone to a Hangout, click “View more apps” in the lefthand column of your Hangouts window (red arrow below) and then click “Add apps” (green arrow).

Choose Remote Desktop from the following page, and you are all set. This will give you control of the computer of the other person in the Hangout (their permission is needed). It’s easy for either party to end the remote session and to return control of the computer to its owner.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

A full screen option has been enabled in the new Gmail compose experience. If you do not see this yet, it will probably roll out to you on August 6th, 2013. To try it out:

1. Click Compose.

2. Click the double-arrow icon at the top right of the compose window.

3. Enjoy a larger composition mode that displays all of the formatting options by default.

If you want to make this option your default view, click into the options menu at the bottom right corner of compose and choose “Default to full-screen.” The next time you click Compose, you’ll be sent to this mode. Both types of compose can be minimized by clicking the black bar at the top.

On small laptop screens, the new Compose experience made email in the lower right to small and difficult to read. For you small screen owners and others that want to put a new email front and center, enjoy the larger compose email options.